The first week of school has come and gone, and we’ve all had a chance to settle back in to school life. That also means we’ve gotten the chance to see yet again just how different school is from our home lives. Whether or not you were pining for Berkeley after a few weeks home, there’s bound to be a few things you miss.

The bathrooms. You don’t have to clean the bathrooms yourself in the dorms, but you do have to share it with a whole floor instead of just your siblings. That’s a lot of people you probably aren’t best buds with using the same facilities.

The food. Home-cooked food! Need we say more? The luxury of trotting downstairs, opening the fridge and taking out a tupperware of deliciousness — that hasn’t come from the dining commons — is one that must not be taken for granted. And now we must live without it until spring break.

The privacy. You may love your roommate to bits, but not all the time. There’s something about walking into your bedroom and having no one else there to share the space with that’s pretty priceless. At Cal, you savor the moments you walk into an empty room. Maybe you even sing a little while there’s no one there to hear (mock) you.

Television. Most kids have at least one show they like to watch and having it on an actual T.V. screen rather than a computer screen is another novelty not found in the dorms. It’s often not even found in apartments either. At home the remote can become an extension of your arm as you flip through channels and watch shows too silly to deliberately pull up on Hulu.

The people. Hopefully this is the most important aspect of everyone’s lives. There are always people we miss from home, from parents, siblings, friends or even pets (though we realize those do not literally fall under this category). No matter where you live on campus, Unit 1 or an apartment on Dwight, this is the part of missing home we hope we can all relate to. But as long as you don’t let yourself get bogged down with it, we promise the semester will still turn out great! Trust us, being the Berkeley student you are, you’ll soon be so swept up in everything you won’t have time for anything else. And we’ve found the people here to be pretty great as well…

Newbie freshmen aren’t the only ones that are allowed to pine for home sometimes. Being away from home can be great when it comes to no curfews and no house rules (no rules your parents assigned at least), but as soon as things get rough we’re all crying for our mommies.

When we’re at home and start sneezing there’s usually someone to take care of us. A mom, a dad, an unusually kind sibling. There’s someone to tell you to have soup and maybe warm some up for you, even if it is Campbell’s from a can. You can wrap yourself up in a blanket, camp out in front of the T.V. and daze in and out like there’s no tomorrow. But when you get sick here? No such luxury.

If you’re in a dorm room you either get soup from Crossroads or go in search of a microwave to warm up a can of soup from the dollar store. Your roommate may be nice and get you some, but they’ve got their own stuff to deal with too. They can’t exactly stick around the room to be your nurse, even if they are your friend. You’ve got to get off your butt and take care of yourself. If you’re in an apartment you’ve got to do the same, only with the added bonus of chores and no meal plan to ensure nourishment of some sort. There’s also school. Sure, you can skip a few classes if you really need to, but those essays and midterms aren’t going to do themselves. Missed lectures add up, and deadlines can only be pushed when you’ve got understanding instructors. College may not exactly be the same as the real world, but it’s closer than high school was.

If you’re incredibly thrilled about returning to school or finally getting out of your parents’ house (we’re looking at you, freshmen and Haas MBA students), nothing will snatch that enthusiasm, throw it on the ground and spit on it more than move-in day (move-out day is just as dreadful, but we’ll write about that in nine months). And if one day wasn’t enough, Cal housing has decided that Move-in Weekend is a much better way to extend the misery.

WOMB is a breakdown of thoughts gestating at UC Berkeley as revealed through the Livejournal community.

We just completed the last full week of classes, and now we only have Monday and Tuesday left before finals creep upon us. Even the Daily Cal is winding down for summer, publishing only on Monday and Thursday.But Berkeley students aren’t ready to wind down just yet. They just need you to shut the fuck up already. Stop having parties and stop having fun. At least that’s what the LJ peeps are saying:bq. I live by a bunch of frats and it has been loud since 5pm. “BRO CHUG CHUG CHUG OHHH PUKE PUKE PUKE!!”In general, UC Berkeley’s just not a happy place right now. We have some issues, mainly with our neighboors and roomates. We understand–having an awful roomie is some sort of sadistic rite of passage in your college years. Or some shit like that. Or like this:bq. I would like to issue some form of a “fuck you, pay me” to my retarded, degenerate, peasant of a roommate. This is a chick who never brushes her teeth/ showers once a week/ has not vacummed/ and has the most disgusting, nasally voice I have ever heard. On top of all of this, she makes racist comments. Today, she had the audacity to call our room “China mountain” or something of the sort, after I heated my lunch in the microwave. She claimed to others that it “smelled to high heaven.”Fellow students offered condolences, some commiserated and one in paticular was upset about the use of “retarded.” Maybe we just all need a little love?That would explain why the post about relationships garnered 69 comments. Heh heh. You get it? The number of the comments? It’s…it’s…All right, we’ll shut the fuck up.UC Berkeley Community [LiveJournal]Earlier: What’s on the Mind of Berkeley: ASUC Politics As Usual